Thursday 17 April 2008

The QA Department: Kings of Sarcasm

It's not easy working for the Moviestorm Quality Assurance Team. You're surrounded by fools who insist on submitting obviously broken code with a comment of "What's wrong with that? It works well enough doesn't it?" The only way to keep yourself sane is with the age-old intellectual comeback, sarcasm.

Here are a few genuine examples of helpful QA contributions to team morale:
Ben_S: Hey twak, the build you committed at half-past three is a strong contender for the title of "Most Broken Build Ever". It's even better than the one you checked in last week.

Moviestorm bug number 1242 (logged by Synnah): The majority of old movie files will now fail to load. I believe what is causing it to fail is having a camera cut in the movie. As it is currently not possible to add a camera cut (the Camera view is also borked - see bug number 1241), I can't test my hypothesis.

Ben_S: (to Dave) Can your mac build PC binaries? Because if it can, I have a job for you.
Dave: (instantly) No!
Ben_S: (to twak) Is he lying?

Ben_S: (yes, again) The new launcher program is currently hard-coded to download data from our test server. We really should remember to change that before it goes live, or we'll have successfully engineered a denial-of-service attack against our own servers. Which would be bad.

Mark: (to Ben_S) Why do you always do that?
Ben_S: Do what?
Mark: You pick the most trivial, annoying, broken thing and home in on it like a ... a ... homing thing.

Ben_S: I'm not being too demanding in asking for a build that actually starts, am I?
[insert more insulting QA arrogance ad nauseam]

And finally, a bug from our bug database that was filed by Synnah in response to the first draft of a flash video tutorial.
MS-1227: Subtitle issues with the 'Moving Around' tutorial
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Run the tutorial with Closed Captioning on.
2. Use eyes to see words.
3. Use ears to hear words.
4. Notice the frequent discrepancy 'twixt the two senses.
The issue was eventually closed, with the magnificently poetic comment:
'Pon my troth, Sirrah, mine eyes do now perceive what mine ears do attend. Verily hath thine sage council been paid want, as thine own dear merits must attest. And like an errant cur unto the bosom of his master, this issue to thine noble countenance doth request resolution.

1 comment:

Hugh said...

Ah, I miss Ben's dry approach to BloodSpell cockups...